The Lion's Lair
The Lion's Lair is the first puzzle in the Mountains of Despair region of Logical Journey of the Zoombinis. Premise The Lion's Lair comprises a statue of a lion with 16 squares in front of it, a big ditch, and a gate. It was left by an ancient people that used to dwell there. On the wall is the order of traits that Zoombinis need to be placed. Each Zoombini must be placed on the correct square, otherwise the stone will turn over and place the Zoombini on the correct one. This will result in loss of pegs holding the portcullis. Once all the pegs are gone, the portcullis falls down and the remaining Zoombinis will not be able to move forward. If a Zoombini is dropped in the ditch, it will be thrown back out, but it will not cause any loss of pegs holding the portcullis. In-game Help Text Not so easy The stone lion requires a certain order from the Zoombinis before they can pass. To move the lion's paw, the Zoombinis must be grouped together and sorted by one attribute, such as nose color. The symbols on the wall next to the lion give clues of what feature to sort the Zoombinis by. For example, colored noses on the wall are hints to line up the Zoombinis by color of nose in the order that they appear on the wall. Oh, so hard The stone lion requires a certain order from the Zoombinis before they can pass. To move the lion's paw, the Zoombinis must be grouped together and sorted by one attribute, such as nose color. The symbols on the wall next to the lion give clues of what feature to sort the Zoombinis by. However, some have eroded over time. For example, colored noses on the wall are hints to line up the Zoombinis by color of nose in the order that they appear on the wall, but some colored noses will be missing. Very hard The stone lion requires a certain order from the Zoombinis before they can pass. To move the lion's stone paw, the Zoombinis must be grouped together and sorted by two attributes, such as nose color and hair style. One attribute is primary and tells you the groupings of Zoombinis by family. The second attribute is secondary and tells you the order within the family. The symbols on the wall next to the lion give clues of what attributes to sort the Zoombinis by. For example, colored noses and hair styles on the wall are hints to first line up the Zoombinis by color of nose and then by hair style within the group with the same colored nose. Very, very hard The stone lion requires a certain order from the Zoombinis before they can pass. To move the lion's paw, the Zoombinis must be grouped together and sorted by two attributes, such as nose color and hair style. One attribute is primary and tells you the groupings of Zoombinis by family. The second attribute is secondary and tells you the order within the family. For example, you may need to first line Zoombinis up by nose color. Of all the Zoombinis with the same colored nose, you may need to arrange them by hair style. Use the information you get from wrong guesses to help you on your next try. For a greater challenge, there are no symbols on the wall to provide clues. Detailed Mechanics and Rules Mathematics On the hardest difficulty, there are four possibilities for the primary attribute and three choices for the secondary attribute, giving 12 different ways of sorting the Zoombinis by attributes. The traits within each of these attributes can be sorted in 5! = 120 different ways, giving 172,800 possible ways of sorting the Zoombinis, though some of these are indistinguishable for a given set of Zoombinis if one or more traits is absent. Strategy for Solving the Puzzle History Category:Puzzles Category:Locations